put the taillights on my 54 and did some engine work for the cooling system and painted the air filter housing. and drove it around the neighborhood for fun. I put the hood on it for S's and giggles to see what it would look like today I will bolt it on.

Made the new front driveshaft today. Made it to replace the one at the top of the picture. It needed to be about 2" longer, and the slip joint was torn up because of it.
I used the double cardan yolk off of the short one, and the slip joint and shaft off of the long one.

Slip joint comparison at ride height.

Much better than it was. Very,very slight vibration at about 65 mph,way better than it was though. I'll drop it off to get balanced at a local shop the next time I have it off. I cruise at 55 so it's nothing I am in a hurry to get done.

Nice to have those bits around when you need them, eh?
In that last pic is that carbon fiber or unobtanium guarding the oil pan?
I put my re-enforcement plate on the inside.

Seriously, nice work, and thanks for the heads up on those shaft parts.
You sure know how to fab up some nice stuff before it goes boom!

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Now if I can borrow a paint booth to lay down some Loden Green Metallic (w/a little extra metal flake).
I forget who had that sweet Green Golden Eagle that helped me decide to keep it the original color. Thanx guys!

Made the new front driveshaft today. Made it to replace the one at the top of the picture. It needed to be about 2" longer, and the slip joint was torn up because of it.
I used the double cardan yolk off of the short one, and the slip joint and shaft off of the long one.

Slip joint comparison at ride height.

Much better than it was. Very,very slight vibration at about 65 mph,way better than it was though. I'll drop it off to get balanced at a local shop the next time I have it off. I cruise at 55 so it's nothing I am in a hurry to get done.

Not too bad for a dummy with no clue as to what he's doing.

Ok, now that you have forged the way, what were your indicators that the slip joint was bad? I have LOTS of play in my front shaft, I can push it with my finger at least 1/2" or more. I am not sure if it is too short or simply worn out.

Nice work BTW! Brave indeed. And all this with stick?

We need to do a bake sale to raise money for a "get skiz a wire feeder" fund. He deserves it. LOL

Built a rack for my high lift. I did not want it mounted outside of the Jeep so it would collect dirt/mud. I did not like any of the off the shelf mounts for inside. Something about not wanting a jack hitting me in the head during a roll over...

Ok, now that you have forged the way, what were your indicators that the slip joint was bad? I have LOTS of play in my front shaft, I can push it with my finger at least 1/2" or more. I am not sure if it is too short or simply worn out.

Nice work BTW! Brave indeed. And all this with stick?

We need to do a bake sale to raise money for a "get skiz a wire feeder" fund. He deserves it. LOL

Yep. I could grab the shaft and wiggle it about 1/2" or so. It should be nice and tight.
The slip joint is about 3" long.both shafts now sit with 1" showing instead of the 2.5 they had showing before.
The rear driveshaft wouldn't even collapse at the slip joint when I took it off yesterday. It must have eventually locked up from being overextended somehow.
Two new driveshafts from $75 in picked parts.

Put Bilsteins on all 4 corners (much nicer ride, but a pain to compress when mounting), also looked at my steering once again. A couple months ago I took her to get completely looked over and the shop found that almost all tiered ends needed replacing and my caster was off, so they fixed it all and I went about my business. After getting it back I swapped in a new steering gear and my steering seemed to get worse, bad wandering at 30-55mph. Looked at it and the shims they put in gave me 9 degrees of caster (yes too much is a bad thing) and my toe-in was nonexistent (if anything it had 1/16 toe-out). Put in new shims which brought me to 5 degrees and made toe-in 2/32 per side, she drives MUCH better now. Won't be going back there ever again.

Well here is a project that I have been wanted to do since I took the aftermarket steering stabilizer off. The steering has been fine with no problems, but it was just one more original part that I could put back on the Jeep.

The first step was to find a stabilizer shock that was configured like the original stablizer shock was. There were a number of posts that said there were none, and a number of inventive ideas on how to create a loop instead of a hole for the end of the shock to mount to, including gate post eye bolts. It turns out there are a number of manufactures that make the correct shock, I went with Monroe, part number SC2940 which turns out to be a Tenneco Steering Stabilizer shock.

While I was searching for that I found and original stabilizer setup on Fee-Bay listed by, and I will use his own words, "from a shady overpriced fleabay vender today" who turns out to be one of our own MoC

I had an number of the original stabilizer brackets but did not have the small backing plate that goes around the tie rod, you don't need it , but I'm a nut so I had to have it. First step was to clean everything up. (glass bead, powder coat, and of course two different colors with clear)

So while I was at it I cleaned up the brackets I had along with a set of aftermarket bumperets I ended up with, anyone want so extra parts?

So on to the Jeep install, first step was to find the center of travel of the tie rod, turned out the total travel was 5 and 7/8 inches, so the center was 2 and 15/16 inches. This is good as the total travel of the shock is 6 and 3/4 which means the shock does not limit the steering radius

Now on to the setup of the stabilizer, using the restoration bible the correct configuration was found and a mockup was done.

So, everything done by the book, All parts (brackets) are original stock parts, everything mocked up, so everything should fit, correct, wrong!

In a full right turn the tie rod to stabilizer bracket hits the differential (spindles are stock as are the spindle arms) Tie rod is a Moog part, but that should not make a difference as the location holes in the spindle arms have not been changed. I'm not sure how to fix this.

In a full left turn the ends of the bolts hit the stabilizer shock, I can gain some clearance by grinding the ends of the bolt off, and by clocking the stabilizer so that the bolt ends are equally spaced around the stabilizer, but then it is not parallel with the tie rod. For now I will do a little of all these things. I need your input to get this correct.

As usual a full update has been added to my web site with additional pictures and text at this link

I completely understand your reason to be by the book and stock. You may have to fudge a little here. I had the same problem on mine with two diff covers, stock and a BTF. I had to outboard mount mine on the opposite side of the leaf spring (driver side). Here are some pics:

in post #61, OleBlue73 graciously posted a pic of his solution, I moved mine to that location and all is good:

I completely understand your reason to be by the book and stock. You may have to fudge a little here. I had the same problem on mine with two diff covers, stock and a BTF. I had to outboard mount mine on the opposite side of the leaf spring (driver side). Here are some pics:

in post #61, OleBlue73 graciously posted a pic of his solution, I moved mine to that location and all is good:

Well I really hate giving up so I went back and made some modifications

The nuts were hitting th shocl because they were sapced out away from the bracket by a heavey spacer and the spacer was required because the shaft of the u-bolt was not threaded all the way down, so.....

I threaded the shaft all the way down, now without the spacer and the shaft trimmed off, they no longer hit the body of the shock, maybe the Moog tie rod is a little thicker than stock tie rod and the body of the shock has a bigger diameter than the original shock which caused the problem. The picture makes it look like the bracket is touching the body of the shock, but it is not.

To fix the problem with the bracket hitting the differential what I did was turn the wheel all the way to the left (up against the spindle stop) and than move the shock to within a 1/16 of bottoming out, and clamp everything down, now when I turn to the right up against the right spindle stop the bracket does not hit the differential. I know the shock is not centered in it's travel, but it is not bottoming out either

Now everything is nice and level and parallel.

Now after all this work it is time to take it for a ride and see if I shot myself in the foot or made it better, want take a guess?

Ya, it is a better ride than a Caddy! Does that page you took a picture of show anymore details on the front wheel alignment? I have some old school alignment tools for big trucks and would like to give it whirl to see if they work better than my eye and feel.